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Comment by eloisant | Hacker News Reader

The feature I use the most on my smartwatch is paying.

So if they can bring contactless payments to their new Pebble they have my attention, otherwise it's useless to me.

There exists 'smart bands', which can be applied to any (generally non-smart, obviously) watch that uses normal pin-style watchbands. They have a contactless chip in them that can store one card. My traditional watches use them, though I had to custom-make one of the bands to be in a style I wanted.

From what I've seen these aren't available in the US, unless I've missed one. (I would be very interested if so!)

The only one I'm aware of in the US is the basically-discontinued Timex Pay. It requires a Chase bank account / card to link with, however.

That is awesome... Any links? Any risk vectors I may be missing?

It's a major use of the watch for me also, but something like a Pebble 2 HR would tempt me to abandon payments. Do you have any links to examples of these bands you've found useful?

How do those handle user authentication and card installation?

I assume you need support from your bank for the former and PINs for the latter?

My (Timex Pay) one seems to function using a virtual card (remotely lockable) provided by the bank, which uses some sort of tokenization-based security chip on the band itself. I imagine there's probably some security flaws because they provide the NFC encoders to the user. It's backed by https://tappytech.com

I wouldn't count on that, getting every bank on board is a massive undertaking. Even Garmin Pay and Fitbit Pay (before it was folded into Google Wallet) have/had huge gaps in their coverage, especially outside of the US.

You could cut out the chip from a debit card and glue it to the back of the pebble?

It's not quite that easy since the NFC antenna extends beyond the chip.

Still doable though, as demonstrated by Bobby Fingers: https://youtu.be/NF4VJJKTjy8?t=825

haha thats too funny. i wonder if his eye starts to heat if he buys too many drinks

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